


Achingly Shy

by MyPretzels



Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV)
Genre: Academy Era, Canon Compliant, FitzSimmons - Freeform, I was watching 6x06 once more and I had to write this, Pre-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-14
Updated: 2020-05-14
Packaged: 2021-03-02 22:47:16
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,477
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24174583
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MyPretzels/pseuds/MyPretzels
Summary: ---- Science and Techonology Academy ----Just sixteen, with a Ph.D and a brilliant future ahead, Fitz is recruited by SHIELD to contribuite with scientific development to protect the world from any sort of threats. Achingly shy and smart, he dives in this new territory, trying to fit in but not successfuly. Not many catch his interests, until he starts to pay attention to another young cadet with a distinctive accent and no fear of speaking her mind out.
Relationships: Leo Fitz & Jemma Simmons, Leo Fitz/Jemma Simmons
Comments: 2
Kudos: 26





	Achingly Shy

It was more to pack than he thought it would be. Nearly half of the trunk of the car was filled with books and notebooks that he’s been collecting through the years.

Mathematics. Physics. Mechanics. Engineering.

Books mapping out his interests and his academic journey.

_I’m going to need a larger car next time._

_Science and Technology Academy, then The Hub._ He thinks as he places his toolboxes beside the books in the trunk.

His suitcases go in the backseat.

It’s strange to think he was able to fit most of his life inside a car.

He returns the keys of his old dorm room at the front desk.

It’s the easier part.

He’s content in leaving that dorm behind, including his roommate. No more nights spent at the library or at the workshop just because Eric had found someone to bring over.

He thinks over and over about the promises of individual dorm rooms when he’s getting inside the car. He checks again his belongings, finding all the necessary documents in his backpack resting in the passenger seat.

Farewell at last.

When agents stopped at the door of the workshop over a year ago, Fitz thought they were after his designs for the Retrievers, he’d been working on them for some time, but he was stuck in how to power them up without ruining the size limits.

They were interested in his work, enough to escort him out and speak about opportunities for his future once MIT was done for him.

SHIELD. They explained.

He knew about it, of course. There were all sorts of mysteries about the agency, everyone had a different theory, but a future that was just as desired as working at the Stark Industries – but war weaponry wasn’t his favorite area.

They offered an opportunity at Shield, four years of study at the Science and Technology Academy, to continue his research with nearly unlimited resources, with the aid of sharing his creations with field agents.

It wasn’t the first time Shield showed up at his door, but the previous time, he was too young to even leave the country and his mother told them away.

She had yelled at them to come back in a couple of years, slamming the door closed.

And so they did.

This time, he accepted.

Back then, he worked his way out with his mother to come to MIT instead, away from government agencies that wanted his intellect to create espionage equipment.

She couldn’t come to the States with him and he was too young even to be emancipated, because of that, he had a state tutor, to check on him every now and them, but he refused to stay in a stranger’s family house.

He held up the argument that he wasn't part of the foster system until the institute accepted his conditions and offered a vacancy in their students housing.

He enjoyed his time at the Institute, but he gladly took the opportunity to move on.

His emancipation documents arrived a week after his sixteen birthday, followed in a few days for his drive’s permit. He was sure Shield moved some sticks to get those in such a short term.

Especially because he refused their offer of flying in one of their mission planes to the Academy, the instability of those things made his stomach revolt in a way no domestic flight would ever do.

Yet, he chose to drive there.

Fourteen hours to drive to the meeting point, that he’d split in two days. Even being a long trip, he was content about being able to make on his own.

His mother had thought him how to drive when he was fourteen, a couple months before his trip to the States. He heard so many times that she wanted him to be independent as soon he’d be in age to act on his own, that he needed to be able to drive to his next journey.

She raised him to the world, after all.

It brought a smile to his face, realizing how much ahead his mother had planned and that he was following her suggestions of seeking his next steps on his own.

[…]

If packing was hard, unpacking was the absolute worst thing to do.

Bringing all his things up four flights of stairs took most of his morning, just because he got too anxious in walking to the lifts in the main hall of the male’s dorm building.

The line for the lift is his excuse to choose the stairs. He checks it every time he's bringing a new box.

He’s not the only one arriving just now, the semester will start in a week and there’s also people moving to different rooms and floors. It’s loud and crowded, more than he imagined.

On his research, the cadets were described as the elite of young intellectuals, recruited in universities and research institutes around the world, to develop new technologies and bring innovations to help the most distinct fields of research.

Allied to the fact that Shield had been interested in his skills for a few years, he expected to find more cadets just as young as him. Yet, most of them were at least a couple years older them him, but cadets on their early twenties were still quite common.

It made him wonder if it’d be more of the same, studying isolated in his room and pilling up anxiety in classes, too shy to speak up in front of everyone.

He’d been underestimated countless times before, no one tended to take him seriously for long, taking his creativity as just fantasied ideas, detached from reality.

It didn’t help that he’d stutter to speak up in public.

He rearranged some of the furniture on his new dorm room, taking the bed from being glued to the window and moving the desktop to a corner, even if it made the two-seat couch get closer to the door than he’d like. He placed his Manchester United flag at the wall facing his bed, to be the first thing he’d have a glance in the morning.

Even with a busy schedule and piles of book to read, he always found time to catch up with football matches, it was something he loved since he was little, he’d be playing ball with his neighbors.

But it was a hobby that wouldn’t drive his mother insane as frequently as building up talking machines or putting apart electronics.

He had a mini fridge, a microwave and a small sink, yet, the bathroom were not individuals as he’d imagined. According to the lady that handed him the keycode to his room, he’d have to share the bathrooms with the other cadets on his floor.

He thinks it could be worst. He tries to accept the idea, remembering that he wouldn’t need to deal with a roommate anymore.

He gets his schedule the next morning, after he wanders around campus to figure it out where everything is, putting up a map on his mind. He attracts some looks, but it’s something he’s been through already, he’s still stuck with a boyish face, he’s not tall enough to look older. People can see right through him.

He tries not to be bothered about it, knowing that most people are just glancing around and that it happens that he’s in their line of sight. It’s the beginning of the semester, there’re lots of new people wandering around, he’s not the only one, he just happens to be one of the youngest.

It bothers him anyway.

In the following days, he spends a lot of time arguing with supervisors to be able to attend to some classes he’s interested in, but keeps receiving replies that they’re too advanced for a new cadet.

It enrages him when he gets the third reply from the Mechanics Department, saying he’ll have to follow the course as expected for the first semester, that such adjustments are only available once the cadets went through the mandatory classes in the first semester.

Fitz gets some victories as well, since he cannot jump to some advanced classes, due his curriculum, he’s invited to participate in several labs, from Mechatronics to Biomechanics. He accepts some invitations after taking a good look on the programmed activities.

Yet, there are other invitations he didn’t aspire but came in a demanding way. He’s invited to participate in one sport for the course of the semester, and at the first week of activities, he’ll be able to choose which one he’ll be doing. It includes a long list of team sports, but he goes straight for the ones that are individual, knowing that he’s not coordinated enough to participate in anything in group without endangering his colleagues.

He leaves his appreciation for football to continue through watching on TV and, occasionally, attending to matches when he travels back home.

He calls his mom to tell that he arrived well and that he managed to fix his room in the way he wanted, adding with lots of excitement that he no longer has a roommate. She asks for pictures and he promises to send them whenever he finds his camera in the luggage he’s still to unpack.

[…]

He’s regretful in the first day of classes, he spent the night before reading and forgot to check the watch, just going chapter after chapter until almost down, when he finally fell asleep with the book on his chest and his feet out of the bed.

He’s stiffened when he jogs through the hallways, trying to go through the crowd and get to his class before the professor arrives. He curses himself for being such a fool.

He trips over someone’s foot when he’s rushing up the auditorium for the free spots at the back. He barely whispers an apology, doesn’t even looking up to see who it is. He sits down twelve seconds before the professor Brandon walk in with a folder full of blue sheets inside.

He opens his notebook in the wrong section, trying to remember whichever organization system he had in mind the day before. He gives up, knowing he’ll never be able to color code anything even if his life depends on it.

Forms are distributed around the class as the professor starts talking about what he plans for the next few weeks, while the slide blinks in the back with the recommended readings for the semester.

They’re all required to fill the form, so the professor can assign partners for the field hours they’ll have to do.

The questions are simple enough, easy to answer, but Fitz has no clue which will be the criteria to decide the partnership, so he tries to be as clear as possible on his answers, in an attempt he’ll be put with someone with the same devotion for scientific discoveries as him.

He learns the best paths to go from class to class along the first week, with a few poorly thought short ways when he was late for something happening across the campus. He finally forms a map good enough on his mind that his legs are more than glad to obey every morning without much thought.

Fitz learns the names of his next-door neighbors as the days pass, because he starts to see their faces in some classes. It leads him to a comfortable routine of having lunch with other people instead of being outside eating by himself while reading a book and trying to get some sunlight before he starts to look like a vampire.

He also comes to the conclusion that he dislikes profoundly the locker room, he doesn’t mind the swimming classes he chose as the sport activity, because it’s a skill he had never had the chance to learn as a kid. For the first time in ages, he doesn’t get mocked for not knowing something so basic as swimming, there’re at least half a dozen of new cadets in the same situation.

But the locker room is awful.

It’s an old building begging for some updates, all the doors are made of metal and clack loudly whenever they’re closed, making it impossible to people to speak in regular levels. His colleagues are loud enough to make the clacking sound better than it should, but up until that, Fitz’s able to deal with it.

It’s the gossiping that bothers him most, the content of all the conversations in front of the lockers. He doesn’t even gets bothered by the naked people walking around when there’s no need for it. It’s the mean commentaries that he hears from the mouth of the third-years, as well some younger cadets talking mean things about the new female cadets.

He was raised by a forward-thinking mother, with a crappy father figure that left before he turned ten, he learned which are the appropriate and inappropriate ways of talking about _and_ to any woman. He feels enraged from time to time, even without knowing of whom such cadets are speaking of, he just doesn’t like the innuendos and labeling going around campus and being shown freely when there’re no female ears to hear them.

At least, it gives him some guidance of whom he might or not approach as his course goes forward.

And of course, since he’s always been lacking luck, he’s paired up with a guy with a sharp tongue for the hours in the Electronic Workshop. Peter, he learns, even if everyone calls him by his last name. Intelligent and talented with programming skills, but still a prick when it comes to locker room talk.

For Fitz’s sake, they don’t get along that well, which means that they only speak to one another when strictly necessary.

He’s got better luck on other classes partners. In Holographic Engineering, he’s paired up with Margot and they have a difficult time understanding each other due their accents, but after they sort this out, it works well enough. She speaks under her breath whenever she’s stuck with an issue, so he learns that’s the time to intervene and work along. She helps him out with time management, because he tends to get too invested and forget that he has other things to do. It’s a functional work partnership.

He does his best to stay awake during Shield’s History classes. In his defense, the voice of the professor is very calm and the lights are always dimmed. He tries to sit at the front and gets in a deal with Liam, the tall German from his floor, to poke one another when they’re about to fall asleep.

Somehow, something – or better, someone – is more efficient on keeping him awake in class.

Another first-year, just like him, sitting at the front, keeps making questions every now and then. Her English urban accent clashes against the soft voice of the professor, so it forces him out of his slumber when she speaks. He’s barely awake in most of the classes, so it takes him a while to actually put a face to that voice.

When he’s changing in the locker room, ready for another hour in the pool, he listens to some four-years being bitter about that girl. He doesn’t know her name, but he knows it’s the same girl – even with a bunch of other British cadets around -, because their description matches the small girl that speaks up in his History classes.

Brown hair, carrying tons of books everywhere, shorter than most, pristine looks even when everyone is falling into chaos of having too many projects to finish to even care about looking as a regular human being. But what intrigues him is the fact that she’s identified as the youngest in campus. Turned sixteen a couple weeks after the beginning of classes, stealing the post Fitz thought it belonged to him.

Simmons. He discovers her name the next time he’s in Shield’s history class, this time awake. He pays attention to her and agrees with her point of view as she argues with a cadet about some political scheme that happened in the sixties. He holds back a laugh when Simmons destroys the other cadet – Hills – argument. She got to his nerves, Fitz can tell, because Hills starts to turn red as the professor finally interferes and congratulate Simmons on her point of view.

The first wave of tests come way earlier than Fitz would have wished for. He’s still adjusting to the life on campus and getting better on time management when it starts. The books pile up in his room, as he devours them as fast as he can, even when it steals him some hours of sleep. He’s got notes everywhere, because his attempt to have a functional system clearly failed.

He uses every bit of the walls to hang on design ideas and prototype sketches, so they don’t get mixed up with the tons of notes he’s got in random paper sheets that once belonged to his notebooks.

The only actual break he takes it’s when he calls home to talk to his mother. He talks of what he’s working on, even when she needs to pretend to understand what he’s talking about. When she asks if he’s taking care of himself properly, he tries to be sincere.

But falling asleep during a phone call says it more than any of his statements.

Returning books to the library is one of his least favorite things to do, because he always feels judged by the other cadets when he walks in with a pile of books in hand, a clear sign that he’s hoarding books in his room. He gets nervous when there’s too much attention on him, which makes his hands sweaty and he takes longer to scan the books back and drop them in the basket.

He wished he could just scan and put them back in the shelves, so he wouldn’t need to give people more work just because he’s got a mind too curious.

The Academy has a vast collection, one that makes him think about maybe staying for the four-year plan they have around here for him, so he could enjoy it more than just rush through the pages and be done with it.

A different side of him remembers that teaching career had been offered to him before. He won’t be surprised if Shield offers the same deal as well.

But Fitz knows better, he’s got no skills to speak in public, even less to deal with the lack of respect he’ll inflict by being so young.

Yet, that’s a thought that crosses his mind every time he walks in the library and wishes he could bend time and get the opportunity of being lost on those many pages.

As the weeks go by, he notices that the groups are settling down among the first-year cadets. Some of the people that would once have lunch with him, now moved to a different table.

It’s not surprising that he ends up on his own sometimes.

He goes back to his previous routine. He grabs his meal and heads outside, to the benches and eat while reading a book or doing homework. Getting some sun helps with his mood, he’s less likely to get bitter about everything when he’s got time to stay outside.

When he was a kid, his mother would joke about it, saying he was doing photosynthesis or that it was a sign that he wasn’t meant to be in one place for long, or locked inside anywhere.

He dislikes that she was right about it.

[…]

Fitz is particularly invested in a chapter about 084’s in one of the books from the Shield’s History. He reads it over and over again before going to bed, because he can only imagine how it was when these first mysterious items started to call up attention and the agency decided it was worth intervening.

It makes him go back to the library in the morning to get another book to see some of the items that were discovered and secured, listed and investigated enough to be extensive records of it. Somethings are just listed, no further details and it brings a spark to the back of his mind, that they might still be an object of study, not enough answers, just more and more questions about it.

That’s how he spends a whole Saturday in the library.

He came in the morning and sat down on the floor by the shelves that held more content about the 084s. He finished one, then found a second that was filled with black marks and lead him nowhere. He finally decided to go for the large portfolio that held a chronological register of items of unknown source.

He only left when it was evening and he couldn’t fool his stomach any longer.

Yet, even with all of this in his mind, he couldn’t find the courage to speak in class on the next Monday. He would open his mouth and give up in the next second, whenever another cadet started to speak, he had things to add on, but no will to talk aloud to over seventy cadets in the auditorium.

It’s a good thing that the English cadet, the one that they call Simmons, has no issues in talking and making herself heard. She talks about Peggy Carter and her influence in the investigation of such mysteries, how she revolutionized the standard method of dealing with potential threats and made herself heard when her colleagues couldn’t care less about it.

Seek and destroy became investigate and secure.

He could listen to her the entire day and not be tired of it.

In a way, it seemed that they had very similar point of views – at least, about history – but yet, she acted in a completely different way. Surrounded by other cadets at the end of every class, she’d never be alone in the hallways or cafeteria, nor even the library. The professors would smile at her and she’d politely reply to them.

Fitz had an ich telling him that he should go and talk to her, because she seemed too interesting to let this opportunity go away. They could get along easily, but that implied he would need got make a good impression, to show himself worthy of her attention.

He could use a friend at the moment.

He just couldn’t figure it out the right thing to say. It had to be smart enough, something to call her attention from all the other brilliant cadets surrounding her everywhere.

As the right idea wouldn’t come, he followed along his busy routine.

More papers, more designs, more tests. Always something to be done, revised or delivered for a class with the shortest deadline he’s ever had.

Eventually, he got used to this. It became easier to follow up the classes and to filter what was the most important things to study and what he could just follow along with what had been explained in class.

He stopped falling asleep in places he shouldn’t. No one to wake him up at the cafeteria, or the library, or the comfy couch in the hall. It was reassuring not being startled by strangers telling him to go back to his dorm.

He learned about the Boiler Room in the week before his finals.

The not-so-secret-but-still-illegal-bar in campus.

Fitz heard about it once or twice before, but didn’t give much attention to it, thinking it could be just a myth or a prank on the first-year cadets. He had other things to focus than to think about liquor and loud music.

But as the finals were getting closer and the campus became quieter with everyone locked inside to study, the idea of having a place to chill out after the exams started to sound nicer.

It was an idea to consider, but before his freedom arrived, he had to deal with people knocking at his door at unholy hours, asking for help to study and his notes of this or that class. He had no clue of how people found out he was good with subjects so specific since he wouldn’t open his mouth unless extremely necessary.

Until he was dragged down to the main hall and across the Wall of Valor, there it was: a ranking of classes and students’ grades.

His name written across a few, right at the top of every class he attended, with the exception of Shield’s History.

  1. Jemma Anne Simmons



He chewed his bottom lip in disbelief. It felt like a provocation and all the same also a confirmation that he needed something excellent to start a conversation with her. She wouldn’t waste her time with someone that didn’t have something to add up on her studies.

It builds an aura of intimidation around her whenever Fitz spots her around. A force field of some kind, keeping him away its range, knowing that stuttering isn’t the right way of approach.

Between helping his colleagues, studying on his own and keeping himself awake enough, he discovers that the only place he could possibly have an opportunity to introduce himself to Simmons is at the library.

Specifically, at Thursdays’ evenings, when she walks in to return her books and wanders around the Bioengineering area to pick new ones.

It’s the only time he’s ever seen her alone, and he only acknowledged it because he happened to trip over the strap of her bag on the floor when he was trying to zip his backpack closed while walking to the exit.

If they glanced to one another, it wasn’t for longer than a second. He walked away with an apology stuck inside his throat.

[…]

He’s stressed out during the week of the finals. His wrist hurts from the excessive amounts of writing he needs to do. Even if Shield is all about technology, the exams are still old school, with paper and pens, with a considerable distance from one cadet to the other.

It’s the longest week of the year so far, when he gets inside his dorm, all he can do is fall in bed and sleep until the next test in the following day.

The cold doesn’t help much either, because it makes him remember he needs to go back home for the holidays and he’s not in the mood to pack again.

When it’s over, he delivers the last test with a smile on his face. He doesn’t have much to be concerned about, even when his colleagues start arguing about their answers. It’s not worth concern now, there’s nothing more to be done about it.

He’ll deal with the consequences when it’s time.

Fitz might be a bit too confident about it, but he doesn’t shove the feeling away, it’s better than diminish his effort just because of the anxiety running high around him.

[…]

Fitz takes a flight home before the results arrive, he knows he’ll receive an email with his grades and according to his score, he’ll be able to actually choose which classes and laboratories he’ll be participating in the next semester.

It’s less stressful to get theses news in a more friendly environment. He doesn’t like the competition that sparkle in students at this time of the school year. Also, he doesn’t need much to impress his mother.

She’s glad enough with him being around, but he knows her better than that sweet tone at the airport.

When they arrive home, there’s a bunch of sticky notes with his name on it, followed by words: fix it, make it stop talking, what is this for? All over the things he brought home the last time he came to visit.

He laughs of how his mother seems clueless around pieces of electronics that he’s so familiar with. He attends to her requests and mutes everything that she complains that speaks and scares her soul away, he fixes things that she claims that aren’t working perfectly, but in fact only needed new batteries.

It’s the most enjoyable holidays he has since he went to MIT years ago.

It makes it harder to return to the Academy, but saying goodbye it’s becoming easier with time.

He only returns a couple days before the new semester starts, already with a tight schedule of classes, but one he could choose completely. He sleeps for most of these days, bringing up excuses to himself that it’s just jet lag.

He’s not a very good liar. Not even to convince himself.

He knows he’s staying in because he misses home and because there’s no one in campus he could speak about it.

Books in hand and an almost organized backpack, he drags himself for the start of a new semester, one that’s supposed to be more focused on his interests than the first one.

He walks around the crowd at the entrance of the Biology Department, halts for a moment when he hears some cadets talking about grades and ranking. He walks away, not wanting to face the crowd, but stops once he glances to his watch.

He’s got some time to spare and his rank might cheer him up a bit.

Fitz excuses himself as he walks back and between the cadets going to their classes, someone elbows him when he’s making the way to the wall where the grades are.

It does cheer him up. He was able to keep up the post of the first of his classes.

When he’s looking for Shield’s History class, he expects to have a name above his, the same way when the partials came out.

  1. Leopold James Fitz
  2. Jemma Anne Simmons



That’s probably why he feels frozen, he doesn’t quite believe the information in front of his eyes.

It’s a gasp on his left side that forces him back to reality, when he turns his head, he finds a _very_ intimidating and _very_ shocked British cadet staring at the same ranking that brought a smile to his face just a few moments ago.

His smile dies.

Once more, when she looks at him, he deviates, turning around and heading to class, no words able to come out. He hides at the back row in the auditorium, not sure what he should feel.

He feels a lump on his throat when he spots her walking inside with a couple colleagues, he can see that she looks offended and by the high tone of their conversation – even though he can’t understand them – he knows that they’re talking about it.

Her eyes search around the room before she sits down and Fitz wishes he could be invisible. From all people in campus, she’s that last one he wanted to upset, especially knowing how fierce her arguments tended to be in class.

Professor Nugent walks in before Fitz can figure it out how he’s going to get himself into the Slingshot Program and get himself send to the sun. He’s too lost on his bitter thoughts to actually pay attention to everything the professor is saying until every one around starts to sigh and grunt.

They’re being informed that it’s up to the professor to choose the partners for Biochem Laboratory.

No one seems to be happy about it. And it feeds in Fitz’s bitterness when he remembers how bad it was to deal with Peter last semester. He’s not sure if he’s more concerned or relieved when Professor Nugent says that their academic achievement _was_ taken in consideration.

Once more, he gives up on having a functional working system to organize his notes in class. When he takes notes, he also numbers the page, just to rip out of the notebook later on and place on a pile with all his notes from this class.

He’s glad that this class it’s going to be followed by hours in a lab, because the theoretical content it’s enough to melt someone’s brain, considering how fast the professor speaks and how uninterested his voice sounds.

When he finally calls it to an end and everyone starts moving to exit the classroom and head to the lab downstairs. Sheets of papers are delivered and it takes a second for Fitz to realized that it’s the partnership info and the project they’re supposed to finish by the end of the month.

Fitz halts, but walks down when most of the class is already gone. He doesn’t get a chance to read his paper, a hand on his shoulder interrupts him first.

She’s saying that they didn’t have a chance to be introduced before, steady voice, plain expression, but intimidating eyes. He barely has a second to look down and check the name of his partner. “Jemma Simmons, Biochem.” She offers a hand.

“Leopold Fitz, Engineering.” He forces the words out without stuttering.

“It was you, then.” She smiles kindly. “Don’t get used to it.”

**Author's Note:**

> English is not my first language, so let me know if I have to correct something. 
> 
> Hope you liked it. Find me on Tumblr ~ MyPretzels


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